Physiocrats

“ We saw men in the highest places of the Republic employ their power and opportunities for selfish advantage, thus stimulating the demoralization of our political life, and by their conspicuous example, and the loud chorus of partisan sycophancy, drown the voice of honest criticism. ”

“ I know not a more solemn or important duty that a member of Parliament can have to discharge, than by giving, at fit seasons, a free opinion upon the character and qualities of public men. Away with the cant of "measures, not men!" the idle supposition that it is the harness, and not the horses, that draws the chariot along! No, sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures computatively nothing. I speak, sir, of times of difficulty and danger; of times when systems are shaken, when precedents and general rules of conduct fail. ”

“ Having destroyed every external object of delusion, let us now see what makes the supposition necessary that the people will mislead themselves. Your Lordship respects 'peasants and mechanics when they intrude not themselves into concerns for which their education has not fitted them.'
Setting aside the idea of a peasant or mechanic being a legislator, what vast education is requisite to enable him to judge amongst his neighbours which is most qualified by his industry and integrity to be intrusted with the care of the interests of himself and of his fellow-citizens? ”

“ In politics, my son, you are not ignorant that we all take our principles from our temperament. The bilious are demagogues, the sanguine, democrats, the nervous, aristocrats. You are both sanguine and nervous, an excellent constitution, for it gives you a choice. You may, for example, be an aristocrat in regard to yourself personally, and, at the same time, a democrat in relation to others ”

“ Examining the history of his native city with the eye of a statesman, and meditating upon the civic revolutions which he himself had witnessed, that sagacious politician had observed, that in the contentions for power which had frequently taken place between the aristocracy and the lower orders of the state, the plebeian faction had almost always failed, through want of a leader whose authority might restrain their irregularities, and whose judgment might give to their efforts the consistency and energy of system. ”

“ But if poor men, hungering after their private good, proceed to public offices, it is not possible; for, the kingly office becoming an object of contention, the sort of battle which results, being at home and internal, destroys them, along with the common- wealth.—Most truly, he replied.—Have you then, I asked, any kind of life which can despise political offices, other than the life of true philosophers?—Certainly not.—Yet still it is necessary that those who come to office should not be lovers of it ”

“ How can we measure the perversity of a king and counsellors who forced into opposition a man so imbued with the deep instinct of government, so whole-hearted, so keen of sight, so skilful in resource as Pym? ”

“ Sir, if this course of things cannot be checked, good men will grow tired of the exercise of political privileges. They will see that such elections are but a mere selfish contest for office, and they will abandon the Government to the scramble of the bold, the daring, and the desperate."—Daniel Webster on Civil Service, in 1832. ”

“ In their nomination to office, they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to an holy function; not according to their sordid selfish interest, nor to their wanton caprice, nor to their arbitrary will; but they will confer that power (which any man may well tremble to give or to receive) on those only, in whom they may discern that predominant proportion of active virtue and wisdom, taken together and fitted to the charge, such, as in the great and inevitable mixed mass of human imperfections and infirmities, is to be found.' P. 140. ”

“ The fact is, that throughout life I have stood aloof from parties. It constitutes my pride and my principle, to belong to no faction, but to approve every measure on its own ground, free from all connection. ”

“ These are casual illustrations of the dislike very generally entertained by the so-called working party politicians for men eminent by character and ability and of signal fitness for the discharge of the real duties of high office. ”

“ How does permanent political headship arise? Such political headship as results from bodily power, or courage, or sagacity, even when strengthened by supposed supernatural aid, ends with the life of any savage who gains it. The principle of efficiency, physical or mental, while it tends to produce a temporary differentiation into ruler and ruled, does not suffice to produce a permanent differentiation. ”

“ These, my Lord, are some of the most obvious difficulties, which, I apprehend, cannot fail of being aggravated at this critical juncture upon the appointment of a person so young and so unknown in public business. They seem also to carry the greater weight with them at a time when so large a body of the nobility are ostentatiously combining themselves in a public avowed opposition; a measure on their part which surely makes it advisable in Government to place in the first offices at least such persons as may be free not only from real but even plausible objections. ”

“ As those who take orders are not those having a special fitness for the priestly office, but those who hope to get livings; as legislators and public functionaries do not become such by virtue of their political insight and power to rule, but by virtue of birth, acreage, and class influence; so, the self-elected clique who set the fashion, do this, not by force of nature, by intellect, by higher worth or better taste, but solely by unchecked assumption. ”

“ Here is the sorely aggrieved patriot who has been accustomed to be taken care of by influential politicians, who finds himself debarred from the public crib by the merit system, and who insists that a boss, or a party committee, or a member of Congress is a better judge of a man's fitness for office than an examining board. ”

“ Rising by these means to power and influence, they gradually monopolize the seats of learning and the halls of theology—they glide, with noiseless steps, into closets, cabinets, and palaces—they become the dictators of the public press, the persecutors of the good, and the oppressors of all public and private liberty. ”

“ And take with you, by the way, my good young gentlemen, this concluding maxim: Men are like lands; you will get more by lavishing all your labour again and again upon the easy than by ploughing up new ground in the sterile! Legislators,—wise, good, pious men,—the Tom Thumbs of moral science, who make giants first, and then kill them,—you think the above lessons villanous. ”

“ It cannot be repeated too often that your peculiar power consists in your standing with that public opinion and nothing else. When we spoke at the Reform Club banquet about the “moral forces in politics,” we meant just this. You cannot try to carry your points by making concessions to the spoils politicians without being ultimately beaten, for you leave the ground on which you are strong. ”

“ The partisan on moral, even on religious questions, will choose a proven rogue who can answer the tests, over an honest, affectionate, noble gentleman; the partisan ceasing to be a man that he may be a sectarian.
The spirit of our political economy is low and degrading. ”

“ It is not for birth, or wealth, or occupation, or any other accidental circumstance, that we ask reverence, but for inherent nobility wrought out in life. This is what should give men rank and titles in a republic. ”

“ More than once I have listened to men of originally noble impulses and high-minded ambition, as they told the story of their miseries—how, seduced by what they accepted as the custom of active politics, they had entangled themselves in the meshes of questionable engagements almost without knowing it ”

“ This conglomerated mass of human beings were under the leadership of men standing higher than themselves in the estimation of the public, but, if possible, really lower in moral degradation. Cheered on by men holding high political positions, and finding little or no opposition, they went on at a fearful rate. ”

“ Our masses—the word comes from your days—you know, of course, that we still have masses—regard you as our actual ruler. Just as a great number of people in your days regarded the Crown as the ruler. They are discontented—the masses all over the earth—with the rule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the old quarrel of the common man with his commonness—the misery of work and discipline and unfitness. ”

“ I have learned a great deal, and this most of all, that no one man, not even though he be a king, can change the whole structure of society at a moment’s notice. There are the Ministers to deal with, the legislature, the sullen resistance of the whole official and propertied classes. ”

“ But, once invested with political omnipotence, if the operative classes voluntarily concurred in imposing in this or any other manner any considerable limitation upon their self-opinion and self-will, they would prove themselves wiser than any class possessed of absolute power has shown itself, or, we may venture to say, is ever likely to show itself under that corrupting influence. ”

“ But that statesmen of good character and high position in the National Government should have been willing systematically to sustain that misrule, is a fact which the historian will find it difficult to explain, unless he accepts the theory that selfish party spirit will sometimes seduce public men in approving, or even doing, on the political field, things from which they would shrink with disgust in private life. ”

“ They claim for all that political system which, without doubt, holds humanity in the most esteem; and however one may despise the practical working of their theory, the grandeur of its principles can not be despised. ”

“ Indifference, selfish interests, the excesses of party spirit, will all begin to disappear as civic life is lifted on to a higher plane, and as the number of those who, standing on that higher plane, will apply a strict test to their own conduct and to that of their leaders, realizing and striving to discharge their responsibilities, goes on steadily increasing until they come to form the majority of the people. ”

“ Is it to be wondered at that, by the aid of such a false standard, mediocrities whose brains are only the echoes of their masters and those who bow to authority, climb to the highest official positions, and even to most of those positions which are not official? ”

“ The provisions of the Congress have sometimes been criticised as if that body had been an assemblage of philosophers, bent only on advancing the course of human progress, and endowed with the power of subduing the selfish impulses of every Government in Europe. ”

“ And another class of men without principle of any kind—such as are too often thrown up in strong political fermentations—looked to these intestine troubles as offering the means of repairing their own fortunes out of the wreck of their country's. ”

“ The power of governing others, possessed by the Ruler,—of legislating for them, particularly of legislating for them through the agency of others, became an object of ambition, and in proportion as the capacities of those who were at first willing and obedient subjects were developed, they must have begun to regard with envious eyes the power of government exercised over them by other men. ”

“ This diversion is only practised by the nobility and men of liberal education, who are candidates for the high employments of the state—When any great office becomes vacant, five, or six of these candidates pettition the King to entertain his Majesty, with a dance on the rope, and whoever jumps highest is to succeed. ”

“ Those princes, therefore, who listen to such pernicious advice, are, in reality, submitting their own necks, and those of their posterity, to the yoke of their servants. For, such is the condition of human affairs, that, in all the successions of arbitrary princes, nine have been weak, and governed by others, for one who has been able to govern himself ”

“ The reformers themselves, young men for the most part, distinguished by great ideals but small ability, were too few to impose their individual will upon their opponents, yet sufficiently numerous to make their support necessary to the success of either party. ”

“ And there is the further fact that habitually, in societies where an offending autocrat is from time to time removed, another autocrat is set up; the implication being that the average sentiment is of a kind which not only tolerates but desires autocracy. ”

“ But, in the largest states, if the abuses of government should, at any time be great and manifest; if the servants of the people, forgetting their masters, and their masters' interest, should pursue a separate one of their own; if, instead of considering that they are made for the people, they should consider the people as made for them ”

“ The private virtues of such men ought to be no inducement with the people to elect them, as they will cause them to persevere in opinions, which the people consider as dangerous and destructive; and in those cases, their superior talents, instead of being a public benefit, will only enable them, to spread the poison contained in their opinions, the more diffusively. ”

“ To put it in words used by Professor Flower in speaking of human society, ‘Progress has been due to the opportunity of those individuals who are a little superior in some respects to their fellows of asserting their superiority, and of continuing to live, and of promulgating as an inheritance that superiority’. ”